


You, Me and Gotham City.

by orphan_account



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Blogging, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 00:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9794390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The blog of a exhausted Gotham City University student and her misadventures with supervillains, cheesecake and getting shot at.





	

**Mr. Freeze is a Chill Guy  
** By Anna Silva.

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked by my Creative Writing professor to start a blog about my life. Naturally, I noted this assignment down, forgot about it, spent two weeks wrapped in a blanket playing Skyrim until I was reminded that the blog would be 30% of my grade.

Part of the reason I had put off writing about my life is because I don’t have much to say about it. My name is Anna, I'm 19 years old, I’m bi and I major in Creative Writing and minor in English Literature. I like cats, cheesecake and video games. My writing is bad. I joke about killing myself a lot. I have anxiety and depression. My life, for the most part, is a mess. I lived with my dad in small town Colorado until I moved to Gotham in September. That’s when things really started to get interesting.

In the summer, I had been rejected from almost every college I had applied to. Yale, Metropolis East, UC Berkeley, Vermont: all of them had come back with a firm and resounding “No.” Dad was telling me not worry, how we’d find a way around this, that we’d reapply if need be or that he’d get me a job in the bakery until I figured something out. That was when he wasn’t berating me for not working hard enough, of course. I was in a weird kind of headspace at the time. My anxiety had me panicking half the time until I was sick and shaking or wearing a hole into the floor from the amount pacing I was doing. The rest of the time, I lounged in bed half-naked, ignoring all of my friends and eating Doritos. It sounds better than it was. I had basically lost the will to live and just wanted to curl up in my room and die.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning when the letter came. I could see sunlight creeping through my perpetually closed curtains. Dad said, “Anna, get the hell out of bed and come and see this.”

“Why?” I mumbled. It’s something I’d asked myself a lot, about everything.

“Just get up.”

I staggered out of bed in a hoodie and pajama pants. Dad had a huge smile playing on his face and I wondered what prank he was about to pull on me, “Okay, what the hell are you going to do to me?” I spun around the room, examining my surroundings carefully. Uncle Karl was bound to be hiding somewhere with a camera.

He didn’t say anything. He handed me the letter. I looked at him. He looked at me. We both stared at the letter. Neither of us spoke as I opened it. The GCU seal was at the top of the letter, it was yellow and black and looked like this:

 

We read the letter together.

_Dear Miss Anna Silva,_

_It is my pleasure to offer you admission to the Gotham City University Class of 2016. At Gotham U, you will be able fulfill your academic potential while living in our unique, exciting and vibrant city. You will find many opportunities for personal growth and development while studying with us. You will be joining a long lineage of accomplished alumni who achieved outstanding success both in Gotham and the wider world. We recognize your talent and skill and we welcome you to our university. The deadline to accept your admission is August 1st._

_School is only the beginning: we offer a wide range of accommodation for students both on and off campus. Outside of academic life, our city has a wealth of amenities and nightlife to offer. Gotham Opera house, Wayne Tower, Robinson Park, the Iceberg Lounge and many more iconic buildings and locations will give you no shortage of places to explore! You might even meet a local celebrity or two._

_If you have any questions about Gotham City University, student life or safety in the city, please email our student welfare officer Nina Harding at[n.harding@gcu.edu](mailto:n.harding@gcu.edu) _

_Sincerely,_

_Paul White  
Vice President of Student Services._

For the first time since summer began and the rejection letters had started rolling in, I felt a swell of relief inside my chest. The relief suddenly bubbled over into excitement. I looked up at my dad, barely able to keep a hold of the letter.

Dad didn’t look impressed, “Gotham.” He said the word as if it was cursed.

“Dad,” I took a deep breath, waiting for one of his lectures. “It doesn’t matter where the college is. At least I got into one.”

“Anna, it’s too dangerous. They have maniacs running around all the time, have you even _seen_ the news stories about that place?”

I frowned at him. “Uncle Karl’s from Gotham and he’s fine.”

“Honey, your Uncle Karl is not fine.”  

Dad took a lot of convincing. It was like the five stages of grief. The first stage was denial: I was _not_ going to GCU. I was going to reapply somewhere else, so dad said. I knew nowhere else would take me, not with my grades.

Then dad got angry. “Your brother got into Metropolis East, why can’t you be more like him?” Hate to break it to you dad, but Cameron’s a tool who spent most of his three years at college getting drinks thrown down him.

Next came bargaining. I was kneeling in front of the couch, hands clasped together, the acceptance letter clipped to my hair, “If you let me go, I promise I won’t do hard-core drugs or become a supervillain. Promise.”

We both entered the fourth stage – depression – though I had never really come out of it. Dad cut himself off from me. He ignored my calls. It pissed me off, but I found myself back in my bed and hating it. Hating that he had driven me back into the slump I had been in before the letter had arrived. Mostly, I ate half-cooked ramen and slept until 3PM.

Finally, dad accepted my pleading and grovelling and said I could go to GCU. This was on the condition that I called him every week and never lied to him, not matter how bad the truth was, or he’d haul my ass back home father than I could say “Holy Parental Overprotectiveness, Batman!”  

After that, I hit my second major roadblock. The acceptance date was in two days, the course started in a month and I had no place to live for the year. 

My anxiety went through the roof and I obsessively started searching on spareroom.com. Dad wanted me to join a sorority but I think I'd rather die. I mean, yes there are girls and just...girls. Girls are great. Girls are also super judgmental which is not good for anxiety. Super judgmental hot girls would obliterate me. 

It got to the point where the only rooms I could find were either ridiculously expensive or looked suspiciously like crack dens. I scrolled through spareroom almost every day, trying to find something that I could at least tolerate if everything good in the city had already gone. 

After about a week of emailing back and forth, googling and wanting the floor to swallow me, a room fell into my lap. It sounded great.

_One Cozy Room for Rent -- Outskirts of Gotham_

_A quaint, cozy double en suite room is available in a two bedroom house on the outskirts of Gotham, near Gotham Academy. Good distance for airport and university, bus stops nearby. Most bills are included in the rent, including water, electricity and wifi. Heating is to be discussed with the landlord. House has a living room, kitchen, laundry room, front porch and decent sized garden. Landlord works out of the house occasionally which the tenant must be considerate of. $500 per month, no deposit. Please contact Victor at victorf1959@gmail.com_

 "This looks perfect, Anna," Dad agreed. "Just make sure you get as much information as possible before you make a decision. Landlords can be villains." 

I looked at a few more rooms in houses and apartment shares, but I couldn't get over how perfect the house seemed. I wanted to live there, so I emailed Victor. 

_Hello Victor,_

_I am very interested in the room, if it is still up for grabs. I will be moving to Gotham in September for college and your location is both beautiful and ideal for me. I just had a few questions about the room/house. I noticed you wrote that heating was to be discussed with you, is the heating broken? Do I need to pay the heating bill separately? Are there any other fees, such as first month's rent upfront? Also, I would be unavailable to view the house but from the pictures I don't think it matters too much, I love it a lot._

_Many thanks,  
Anna Silva. _

For a few days, I heard nothing. I wanted to tear my hair out every time I opened my inbox and found no message from Victor. Finally, three weeks before I was due in at GCU.

_Dear Anna,_

_Thank you for my email. I have not been able to respond to your email for several days and for that, I apologize. I was attacked a few nights ago by a thug in the city which left me injured. I am glad you are interested in the room and would be pleased to have you here._

_I have a chronic condition which makes me intolerant to high temperatures. My house is what many would consider cold, however you will have an electric fire in your room. Just please do not leave it on all day, especially when you are out of the house. There are no other fees. Move in in September and pay the rent at the end of the month, that is all I ask._

_Sincerely,  
Victor. _

There was something off about Victor's email. There was something off about Victor, too. I didn't tell dad this. I didn't even question it that much, or bother to do basic research. I was in a panic, the room seemed perfect and I didn't want anything to ruin that. Deep down, I think I wanted to believe everything was going fine - that I wasn't depressed, that I was a capable adult who had their life together. That I could make capable adult decisions without running to dad every two seconds. 

I liked the room and the house so I agreed to move in.

I am a fucking idiot. 

Saying goodbye to dad was harder than I expected it to be. I had already shipped some essentials that I couldn't take on a flight to the house and all I had was suitcase in the trunk and dad beside me in the car as we drove to the airport. It was a two hour flight from Denver to Gotham. We didn't speak. Dad and I rarely did, unless it was something important or he was making fun of me. Ed Sheeran played quietly through the car's radio. Dad turned to me abruptly and said, "I'm not an asshole, Anna." 

I blinked at him. "Uh...okay?" 

"I know I can be...difficult...sometimes," He said. "But I just want to protect my daughter. I want to protect you, Anna. That's why I didn't want you going to Gotham. There's so much bad there."

"There's a lot of good too," I put my index fingers up to either side of my head to make bat ears. Dad cracked a smile. "Relax, dad. I know you just did it because you care about me but I can handle it. There's probably so many people in Gotham who live normal lives without ever crossing paths with Batman or the Joker or any of those guys." 

Then dad was back to same old stern Dad, eyes fixing on the road. "Not enough people." 

We got to the flight gate and my eyes were tearing up. It was the kind of crying that you can just about fight back but everyone's asking you if you're okay and it's hella embarrassing. 

Dad hugged me and I'll admit it, I let out a few of the tears. "I love you, Dad." 

“I love you too, sweetheart.”

I’m going to skip over the flight and all that shit because this blog entry is getting longer than I expected, it’s like 1AM now and I kinda wanna go to bed soon so~

I ended up in a suburb just outside Gotham City limits sometime after getting on the wrong bus at the airport and having to ask the rude bus station manager what bus to catch to get to the address Victor had given me.

I stood on the corner with my suitcase, wondering whether I’d got the right place. Most of the houses looked like they were empty, some falling into disrepair. It was like a ghost town. A hint of unease brewed, but I pushed the feeling back down and carried on up the path.

Squashed between a vacant house and one that looked like it hadn’t been redecorated in years was Victor’s house. There was ice covering every patch of Victor’s front porch and lawn. It was strange, even for September, because the ice didn’t seem to creep into the neighbour’s gardens or the side of their houses.

I think my mind made the connection then, but I so badly wanted to be wrong.

I knocked on the door and after a moment, Mr. Freeze answered.

Mr. Freeze answered the door.

I am a complete and utter fucking moron and Mr. Freeze answered the door.

 He wasn’t even subtle about it. He stood in the doorway, towering over me and in his full sub-zero suit. I just stood there in bewilderment. He stared at me through glowing turquoise goggles. Then he smiled at me and it wasn’t menacing as I'd expected to be.

“Hello, you must be Anna,” His voice was strange as it passed through the mechanisms in his suit. Victor stepped back, motioning into the house. “Please, come inside.”

I should have turned around and started thundering back down the path. Even if it meant running all the way into the city, that’s what I probably should have done. I was so dumbfounded and so lost that I listened to him and dragged my suitcase over the threshold.

When I breathed, I could see my own breath fog up in front of me. The floor and walls were covered in a thin layer of ice. The furniture was pristine white or a light shade of blue. A freeze gun hung where the coats should have been.

I wanted to say, “What the fuck?”

I wanted to say, “Why did you lie to me?”

I wanted to say, “Are you going to kill me?”

Instead I said, “This is...wow.”

“It’s a lot to take in,” Victor sounded apologetic, at least. He started up the staircase and I followed him. “I would have mentioned my true identity to you but I am a private person, I’m sure you can imagine why. Had Batman not discovered my location, I was nervous that I would scare off potential roommates.”

Yeah, no shit.

“Your boxes arrived a few days ago, I put them in the closet yesterday,” Victor informed me. We stopped in front of a faded white door. “This is your room.”

He unlocked the door and let me step inside. I almost expected everything to be made of ice. The bed looked like it was, but I quickly and thankfully discovered it was made of plastic or some other material that resembled ice. Everything else in the room seemed fine: a closet, a bed, a dresser, a desk and the electric fire as promised. The walls were a soft baby blue.

I stood in the middle of the room, looking like a dope until I choked out a, “Nice.”

Victor nodded. I lifted my suitcase up and put it on the bed. I was briefly aware of the phone in my pocket, how I should be calling Dad or the police or someone.

Victor said, “Let me show you around the rest of the house.”

I followed him. We passed an archway that led into a room. There was no door and everything, once again, was fixed and frozen. He said, “That’s my room. You must never go in there.”

“Okay.” I replied, trying to get a nosey glance into the room. I thought I saw cryogenic tube humming away in one corner, but we passed the room too quickly to get a proper look at it.

“The bathroom is down the hall. Sometimes the water in the pipes freeze, if that happens let me know and I’ll call someone or just use a hair dryer on it, whatever works.”

“Okay.”

We went back downstairs, into the living room. Again, everything was either white or blue but I was pretty impressed by the monster of a TV he had mounted on the wall. It must have been a “42. Suddenly rooming with a supervillain didn’t seem too bad.

We went into the kitchen. That’s when things got really weird. There was no cooker, just a microwave and fridge-freezer. There were cupboards though and in those cupboards, I discovered as I cautiously opened one of them, were snow globes. Hundreds of them.

“Umm…”

“I’m quite the collector,” He said. “Nora liked them.”

I knew I had to tread carefully here, “They’re, uh, very pretty.”

We walked over to the fridge. There wasn’t much inside: a carton of milk and some half-eaten takeout. On the top shelf of the back of the fridge however, was a rack of 6 glass jars with a blue substance inside each of them. “This is my cryogenic coolant,” Victor pulled the rack forward so I could see the labels on the lids. “I need it to live and it’s toxic when ingested so don’t touch.”

“Okay.”

“You’re quieter than I expected you to be…”

Maybe. That’s. Because. You’re. A. Fucking. Supervillain. “I’m just really tired.”

Victor considered me for a moment, and then nodded behind the helmet of his suit. “Very well,” He said. “Two of my, ah, _assistants_ will be around shortly. Perhaps it would be best if you became acquainted with your room.”

I got the indication Mr. Freeze was politely telling me to fuck off.

“Yeah, okay.” I said numbly and walked back through the house and up the stairs almost in a daze.

I let the bedroom door thud shut behind me and sank down onto the bed. My hands were turning red from the cold. I had brought a massive winter coat with me and half a dozen blankets but I didn’t bother to get any of them out the boxes or my suitcase.

I just sort of sat there staring into space for a while. Dissociating. Weirdly enough, I wasn’t feeling panicky or anxious. Despite the whole mess, Mr. Freeze seemed like a chill guy (heh) and it wasn’t like there was much I could do at this point.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, a stomach-churning sensation as I saw the text was from Dad.

_Everything OK? xx_

I knew what would happen. I ran it over in my mind like a bad movie. As soon as Dad heard about this, he would immediately hop on a plane and drag me all the way back to Denver with him. He may or may not start a fight with Victor, which would probably get him killed. If he wasn’t, then I would spend the rest of my life being reminded of this moment: about how I was so immature that I couldn’t even move out without something going wrong on the very first day. Dad would always see me as the failure in the family, unlike perfect Cameron with his perfect Metropolis East College and his perfect girlfriend who was perfectly straight just like him and the rest of our family. Except me.

So I broke Dad’s first and only rule. I lied.

_yeah dad it’s all good. landlord’s really nice. love u_

Of course, nowadays Victor and I get along just fine. We watch the Walking Dead together and his “assistants” (henchmen) Larry and Phil took me to my first baseball game. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made, aside from the times I’m being taken hostage by Arkhamites who want leverage over Victor. That can really suck.

I can even deal with the cold; I just look like this a lot:

We didn’t start off like that though; it took a lot of patience and late nights comforting a crying Victor who’d woken up from a dream about Nora. And this was all before the madness that my first day at GCU.

*

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not American so if I'm completely butchering the 'college in Gotham' concept at any time let me know.


End file.
